You’re sitting in a small office talking with your college academic advisor about your career goals. You want to be a teacher and shape the minds of the youth, but due to your high test scores in math, your advisor encourages you to pursue a degree in business in order to have a higher income. 

You follow his advice, but even when you retire, you wonder what it would be like to teach students, so you become a substitute teacher, and the students call you Mr. Funk.

“If I walk into a room and I don’t know any of the kids, my goal, particularly if I’m going to be there for a couple of days in the same room, is I want to learn every student’s name,” substitute teacher and Ankeny Dollars for Scholars donor Bill Funk said.

Funk and his wife, Connie Funk, who is a retired Kindergarten teacher and current substitute teacher, have always valued the pursuit of further education. This is one of the reasons they fund a scholarship through Ankeny Dollars for Scholars every year.

“We value education as being really differential in people’s lives, and so we want to support anything that supports further education for kids,” Connie Funk said.

Yet, if students choose to pursue further education, it comes with a monetary cost. For college in particular, the Education Data Initiative reports, the average cost of college in the United States is $38,270 dollars, which includes tuition, books, and other living expenses. 

With this high cost, students are utilizing a variety of avenues to pay for college. Sallie Mae’s national study of how students pay for college in 2024-25 concludes that scholarships and grants paid for 27 percent of tuition.

“I’ve applied to, I don’t know how many scholarships, hoping I get at least some of them,” senior and prospective Iowa State University (ISU) student Jakayla Campbell said. “I come from a low-income family, so I wanted as much college cost to be covered as possible, just so it was a lighter load on me, but also a lighter load on my family.”

Scholarships are nothing new to Ankeny High School (AHS), and counselors have encouraged students to utilize resources like Schoollinks, to find scholarships that are applicable to them during Career Ready Week. Yet, some students felt that the scholarship matching on Schoollinks was not helpful.

“It was hard trying to find [scholarships]. I know Schoollinks had opportunities and scholarships, but when I went through Schoollinks, and I was looking for what I wanted, if I were to make it subject- based, I couldn’t find what I was looking for,” Ankeny Alum and ISU freshman Ava Sesker said.

Besides Schoollinks, many counselors promote Dollars for Scholars to students. The Ankeny chapter of Dollars for Scholars has been able to award $1.7 million dollars in scholarships to AHS and Ankeny Centennial High School (ACHS) students, but that doesn’t mean every student receives a scholarship.

“If you’ve done a decent job in high school, and you’ve got a decent grade point average, you’ve been involved in activities, you’re probably going to qualify. But then it becomes a challenge of how many scholarships they have to offer versus how many applicants there are,” B. Funk said.

Funk further described how it is unfortunate that well-deserving students may not receive a scholarship simply because there are not enough available. He and his wife encourage other community members to become donors, whether that be giving ten dollars to the organization or donating $500 or more to have a named scholarship.

“We can count several parents from past recipients that we gave a scholarship to that are now doing it, and they’re paying it forward,” B. Funk said. “A reason that we do it is that if we can help illustrate to other people how they can get involved in that process, then it starts widening out and there’s more opportunities.”

While some students may feel that applying to scholarships is tedious and time-consuming, Funk illustrated how if someone earned a $500 scholarship, and it took them four hours, that would be equivalent to earning $125 dollars an hour, and for some, finding that time can be very valuable.

“One of the scholarships I got required three essay questions, which I literally did during a show choir competition because sometimes I just sit, so I just find the space in between,” Campbell said.

Campbell, similar to many other students, needed to write a few essays. Scholarship boards may also ask students to turn in their most current transcript and a letter of recommendation. A letter of recommendation can be from a teacher, manager, coach, or other adult figure who knows the applicant well.

“When I think of myself, I don’t really think of a lot of the things that [recommenders] write down,” Campbell said. “To me, I’m just being me, but other people obviously notice what I do, so it’s a nice feeling.”

According to U.S. News, AHS has 1,346 students, and with such a large number, some accomplishments may go unnoticed. To shine a light on some seniors, AHS is hosting Senior Spotlight Night on May 13. At Senior Spotlight Night, the Ankeny Dollars for Scholars scholarships are handed out.

“You guys work so hard as students, and I think you deserve some recognition as you walk out of here, and to see the recognition part for a student that’s worked really hard just brings us joy,”  C. Funk said.

When a student receives a Dollars for Scholars scholarship, they have the opportunity to meet with the donor. The Funks said that they always ask to get together with the student before and after their first year of college. Through this connection with students, they have been able to see students grow, and they even had the honor of being invited to some students’ weddings.

“The kids that we’ve come closest to have always just been neat kids to begin with,” B. Funk said. “And so even though they’ve definitely grown up, their world’s bigger, that heart was there from the beginning. And then we just get the joy of celebrations with them.”

This moment of recognition and celebration is not only valuable to the donors but to the students receiving the scholarship as well. For some students, it can be especially impactful when the scholarship relates to an activity that they enjoy.

“When I received it, I felt very excited, because I guess I represented what the Toni Dickey scholarship stood for,” Sesker said. “It felt very meaningful to me.”

The Toni Dickey scholarship is given to high school golfers who attend the Toni Dickey Invitational, and winners are chosen not based on score, but by how they describe the influence of golf on their lives. Sesker, who had been on the team for four years, shared how she was able to share her love of golf with her friends.

AHS students are not only receiving scholarships from local organizations, but also from their prospective college or university. Campbell received a full-tuition scholarship from ISU, which came with some requirements.

“I have to keep a certain GPA,” Campbell said. “There are two different classes that I have to take, I have to attend a bunch of meetings, [and] I have a three-day orientation.”

While some students are having success with scholarships, it may not alleviate the stress that can come with applying, whether finding the time to write essays or having the confidence to submit your application.

“It was difficult when you know that there’s a lot of applicants, and you don’t know if what you are gonna bring or put on this application is good enough compared to everyone else that’s going to be applying,” Sesker said. 

Being a part of a large school with a variety of other students applying to the same scholarships can add an additional layer of stress to the application, which may cause people to procrastinate or not apply at all. 

“What you don’t want to see is somebody not chasing a goal because they think they may not achieve it,” B. Funk said. “Every time you set a goal, there’s a chance of failure. So [in] this application, you’re setting a goal to get a scholarship, and you may not achieve it. But just the pure possibility of failure should never stop you from chasing a goal.”